July 27, 2022
July 27, 2022
No matter how, when, and where a business started, eventually, it will need an office phone system to support its business communication. Why? Statistics reveal that 46% of businesses say that they’ve lost a customer because of ineffective or poor communication. Certainly, ineffective business communication not only causes unmet expectations but also results in clients’ appointments being missed. With so much competition out there, can a business afford such losses? Absolutely not!
Though, it might look tough to get the right office phone system for your business especially when you are small in size. But there are ways to easily figure out the most suitable one. In this post, we are going to cover every aspect of choosing a phone system for small businesses.
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Traditionally, legacy telephone systems have been used for business communication for quite a long. These are in the form of phone sets along with attached wires that are tied to desks. However, with the internet becoming the preferred choice for communication, cloud based office phone systems that work over the internet cloud are becoming the popular choice.
Let us understand the major features offered by cloud based office phones, one by one:
For obvious reasons, having someone to greet your callers is going to benefit your business. An IVR presents as a perfect tool for this. It plays a greeting message that would entertain your callers for 10-to 15 seconds. This is certainly better than making them hear that annoying ringing sound.
Further, when customers have the option to choose their preferred department or agent from the IVR menu that can present them with multiple layers of menu options, it certainly adds to their convenience. Further, the time to handle inquiries gets lesser which means agents can take more calls and can utilize their saved time for other productive tasks.
It is important to understand that your business needs to attend to all the customer calls no matter what time of day it is. While you may be operative for 10-12 hours a day, the calls that come during non-working hours shall not go unattended. This is where voicemail serves as a critical resource. With the voicemail feature in the business phone system, callers can leave their messages. These messages get saved along with the details of the caller. All these voice messages can be heard and responded to later. Some systems even send these audio messages to your preferred email inbox for easy access.
Modern-day office phone systems can record calls and save the audio files to cloud storage which can be accessed anytime. Call Recording is highly useful for managers and supervisors. They can refer to customer issues and instances of unhappy customers which can be mentioned as use cases for showing recruits.
Some phone systems may delete these recordings after a certain period of time. So you should check the duration to ensure it suits your business needs.
This feature is of great benefit to employees who travel a lot or are frequently doing work while on the go. As the name suggests, one can use multiple devices to access the office phone system as the system is software based. With this, business communication remains continuity. Even if one device breaks, there are many other options that can be used for calls.
These days ‘data is king’ and businesses cannot make it without having data in hand. They cannot progress if they don’t know about areas that need improvement. Call Reporting and Analytics features of the office phone system are of great use here. These provide insightful reports generated automatically by combining selected or all call logs for a certain period of time. The on-premise systems lacked this feature. This means businesses had no way to check on the performance of their teams or evaluate the customer experience. Call Reporting and Analytics can bring a lot of difference as business decisions can be made in a much more organized way.
Besides these features, a cloud office phone system offers tremendous benefits for businesses of all sizes. But for small businesses, these can help in significant growth. Let us see the reasons why small businesses are moving to cloud telephony:
If we look at the traditional PBX systems, they consumed more space, time, effort, and above all more money. Besides all the investment in installation, the maintenance part eats up a major chunk of resources on a continuous basis. With a cloud-based phone system, there’s no such hassle. The setup is easy plus it is hosted by a third-party service provider which means no maintenance headache.
Using different apps for different communication needs can create a lot of mess. Switching to a cloud-based phone system simplifies your communication operations greatly. Call management features like call routing, call recording, call reporting, etc. in one simple solution can help you work much more productively. It’s like a ‘one-stop shop’ where you get the maximum number of communication tools required for your business.
For a business, it is important to project a professional image in front of its prospects. A cloud-based business phone system certainly helps with that. The call flow gets faster and calls are answered quickly. Features of a business phone system help businesses in providing first-class and flexible customer service.
For businesses, especially small-sized ones, it is important to have a solution that can keep up with their growing needs. Also, the solution should be able to scale down when the business needs to do so. While scalability is a major issue with traditional phone systems, there is no such issue with modern office phones. Cloud phone systems can easily scale by adding and removing extensions as per requirement. This simply means that you can control the cost spent on business resources which adds to the business’s efficiency.
Promptness plays a key role in customer satisfaction. It is better to listen and ask customers to wait rather than not being able to answer calls at all. With on-premise phone solutions, employees get stuck as they can only take calls while physically present in the office. However, with cloud-based office phone systems businesses enjoy greater flexibility. Employees can stay connected to their phone systems even if they are not in the office. Simply said, customer calls can be attended to easily on a mobile device just by having an internet connection.
Traditionally, business calls were made using telephone lines. Each telephone line would carry one call at once. So if a business wanted to make 4 calls simultaneously, it would need at least 4 telephone lines.
Then came the VoIP which is Voice Over Internet Protocol. Through VoIP, the call travels down through the business’s broadband connection. VoIP allows making as many calls as the business wants using the broadband line. It, therefore, eliminates the need for multiple lines and helps in saving the business money.
After VoIP, came the cloud-based phone systems. A major factor that differentiates cloud phone systems from the rest is that these are an ‘Off Premise’ telephony solution. In other words, cloud phone systems do not need on-site hardware to control business calls.
Before Cloud phone systems came into existence, a PBX, which is hardware was required to be installed on the business’s premises. The PBX performed the job of sending calls to their correct destinations. Also, it provided employees with their own individual extensions of the phone system for dialing.
In simple words, the cloud phone system does exactly the same thing. The difference is that it does not need hardware installation in the office. Any business can use its broadband connection to access a cloud phone system. The upkeeping and maintenance part is completely upon the cloud business phone system service provider. Read more.
For small businesses, it is essential to be economical as they have limited monetary resources. We are already aware that cloud based phone systems require lesser investment as compared legacy phone systems. That makes cloud phone systems a perfect fit for small businesses. Below mentioned are the key areas where they let you save:
These systems do not include expensive hardware setups and installations. Being software-based, these systems don’t get obsolete easily. Maintenance is done through software updates which demands negligible expenses. Unlike the traditional phone systems where even after high investments, hardware depreciates in value with time.
With wires and equipment, technical staff is required for handling the legacy phone systems. But today, businesses can save on this as cloud phone systems for offices are much simpler to upgrade and scale.
Cloud phone systems ensure maximum uptime. These get easily restored even if there’s a fault or interruption. This is because the majority of service providers offer 24/7 technical support for quick fixing. So with systems up all the time, your employees remain productive. Work happens in continuity which certainly adds to your savings.
Since these cloud phone systems or hosted phone systems are managed by service providers, the service can be availed on a subscription basis. Packages on a monthly or yearly basis can be chosen. So there’s no one-time big investment.
If you are looking forward to evaluating the right business phone system, then consider these points:
For inquiries, you can get in touch with our team at KloudTalk. We will be happy to answer your queries.
Note– This post has been last updated on 27-07-22.
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Business phone systems have become a part and parcel of every company, especially the small scale enterprises.
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